


This is for him

by caseykaboom



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caseykaboom/pseuds/caseykaboom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York is destroyed, the Avengers are scattered, and Natasha wakes up without knowing who she even is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is for him

The cold hits her like a slap.

She leaves the flimsy tent door flapping in the wind, and stumbles down what remains of the street. Stumbling because probably her foot is broken, and her head hurts like a bitch, but apparently she is used to navigating around pain.

That’s good, being able to navigate around pain. Not so good that she doesn’t know why she’s in pain, how she broke her leg or hit her head, why New York is in shambles and the sight of it leaves her clutching her chest and fighting to even out her breath.

New York is destroyed. She doesn’t even remember what that’s about.

(At least she knows where she is.)

She’d told the nurse in the emerg medical tent that she was fine, she didn’t need any treatment, she needed to leave. He didn’t try to argue with her, didn’t say anything really, just gave her a shot of antibiotics and waved her off. She couldn’t tell if he knew who she is. She tries to recall his facial expression but it’s fuzzy. Was he uniformed? She can’t remember noticing. Everything is fuzzy.

She wraps her arms around herself. It’s cold as balls. Through the ashes and cement dust it smells of frozen shit and body fluids. How many people have they lost? What happened to—to _them_ , her friends?

She has friends, somewhere.

She whips her head up and scans the rooftops for—for what? There is someone in her mind that she can’t fit a name to, and she can’t make out his face past the purple blur, everything in her head is painful and featureless and broken. A blonde. A pot of rancid overnight coffee. Pants. The letter A.

They were supposed to do something, she thinks.

 _Assemble_ , she thinks, and has no idea why.

She steps into a pile of slush and stands there, feeling it seep into her boot. It feels good, on the broken foot. She feels guilt, suddenly, realizing that she shouldn’t have taken the antibiotics. Soon there will be a shortage.

(Soon everyone will die)

She was supposed to do something. She has to find them, her friends, she has friends, somewhere. The world is ending (will end) (has ended), and they were supposed to do something. They are still supposed to do something, maybe. There are still things they can do, maybe.

She breaks into a run, stumbling on her bad foot, it hurts so much that half of her wants to saw it the fuck off, half of her wants to cuddle it in a corner and cry. She swears and the sound startles her, what was that, Russian? Ukrainian? Polish? She doesn’t have time for this. She swears again in English, _shit_ , and it’s graceless and misshapen, it is a burden instead of liberation, she knows because she can swear in—in a lot of languages, she’s sure, she remembers—

_“Shit,” he groaned in Albanian, passing her the last clip of ammo between the two of them, they were getting their asses handed to them and had no support whatsoever, again, she really needed to stop getting sent to the middle of ass-fucking nowhere without an extraction plan, this was getting old really fast—_

_“Shit,” he snapped in Tagalog, they were at an awkward angle and if he made the shot there will be 10-ish-year-old witnesses, and he cared, unlike her, he had a heart, unlike her, she’d known it from day one and was there any wonder that she would—_

_“Shit,” he whispered in Russian and she was bleeding out in the snow, she’d been dodging him for months and then she’d gotten herself shot by someone else, what a joke, what was he doing—_

_“Shit, Nat,” he yelled in their comms as the explosion rattled her skull—_

She steps into sludge and slips, scrapes her hand and barely notices, her head is throbbing and her foot is a bag of broken bones, her eyes sting and she can’t breathe. _Shit_ , she thinks, _shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,_ in all the languages she knows. She has a name. She has a name. Her name is Nat, maybe, there is someone she loves, she wonders if she’s ever cooked for him, if she’s ever waited up for him, if he’s ever bought her something nice on their anniversary, if they have an anniversary.

 _Breathe,_ she tells herself, gasping and blinking back tears. _There are more important things._

She wonders if he’s still alive.

(Please let him still be alive)

A military truck rumbles ahead, and she scrambles to her feet and ducks into an alleyway. It’s clumsy, she has none of the grace that she should have, it’s all instinct, muscle memory, data recall. Her body knows this, she realizes, her body is used to this, pain and stealth and paralyzing fear. She’s fucking terrified and she doesn’t know why, she can do this, she’s _good_ at this, she’s done this _so many times_ —

 _“We do it for the good,” he said, it was so cheesy and so lame and it was a blatant lie, he knew it and she knew it but she clutched on to it anyway as if she was drowning_ —

 _“I’ve got you,” he patted her shoulder and she laughed in his face, she was better than him in every way imaginable, in what way has_ he _got_ her—

_“Look the fuck around,” he snapped, and she realized for the first time that she wasn’t alone, not here, she wasn’t the only one broken, she wasn’t the only one afraid—_

She drops to her knees and convulses.

This is why she’s fighting. She knew there had to be a reason. This is why she’s doing this, why she’s trying so damned hard. She doesn’t give two shits about the world or who rules it, but there’s someone that does, somewhere. There’s someone that saved her, maybe, that taught her about balancing ledgers, maybe. There’s someone she owes a debt to, somewhere, because without him she is a child, without him she is a machine, without him she is a convenient (inconvenient) bag of lethal skills with pretty red lips—

(Without him she is a copse in the snow)

This is for him, whoever he is.

She forces herself up, leaning on her good foot and the wall covered in filthy graffiti, her heart pounding. She wipes her face, blood and sweat and tears, squeezes her eyes shut and grits her teeth, and sifts through her memories. It takes her a minute to realize that the noise is coming from her, it’s her that’s screaming, she’s screaming for some reason and it’s guttural and raw but she’s got it, maybe, there was a flying aircraft carrier, somewhere, a tower that never slept, a mansion with unraked leaves thick on the grass and windows that stretched like a nighttime train—

She limps down the alleyway. She’s going to do this. She can do this.

This is for him, whether or not he’s still alive.


End file.
